09 October 2009 | Buyer Advice, News | admin

Prevention is better than cure. Your PC can be protected using simple precautionary measures to ensure a trouble free computing experience

Install an Always Active Antivirus
Install an antivirus to make sure that your computer is virus free. Antivirus software detects the viruses present in the system and removes them. It also acts as a protective shield against further viral attacks. Anti virus software must have updates enabled. New Virus keeps emerging and the antivirus companies add detection and removal solutions for these new viruses. Antivirus software updates ensures that the antivirus software is current and its database up-to-date to provide maximum protection for the system.

What is a virus and who creates it?
A virus is a computer program written by knowledgeable software developers to satisfy their objectives. The software is called a virus owing to its replicating nature. Viruses are categorized by their severity with effects ranging from controlling the computer to crashing a network. Reasons for introducing a virus can be classified as follows

    To Gain remote control of a computer to access the contents or use it to execute specific work as a proxy

    Revenue generation

    To Monitor and extract important information from the computer

    To Prove the expertise of knowledge in system or more as an act of revenge

    To Crash a computer network

To Gain remote control of a computer to access the contents or use it to execute specific work as a proxy
This type of virus is known as a Trojan and most often found in the attachments downloaded by the user assuming it to be a file sent by a known contact. The infected system becomes the part of the virus creator network called the zombie network. The network grows in size as more computers are infected. These infected computers transmit tiny information to each other simultaneously thus clogging the network and causing overload on the service provider. It may be done as a result of competition or extortion.

Revenue generation
This virus is known as RogueWare. It assumes the role of protection software and fools the user by projecting a huge number of infections in the scan result. Alarmed users are prompted to buy the full version to remove the infections. The payments and the online payment methods are misused to generate revenue for the virus creators.

To Monitor and extract important information
This virus is known as a Sniffer. It tracks the incoming and outgoing data from the system for important sensitive information. It helps the attacker to collect crucial information to act as an imposter.

Prove the expertise of knowledge in system
In 2003, Lovesan virus attacked more than a 10 million computers. It was a demonstration virus to prove that Windows could be easily hacked. The virus developer wanted to exhibit his talent to the world. The attacked system would reboot every 60 seconds with some personal messages.

To Crash a computer network
This type of viruses has almost become obsolete as disabled computers cannot transmit information and do not serve the purpose of modern day virus but virus disabling networks are more common. The networks are overloaded by the virus and the system of denial inbuilt in the networks to respond to overload is activated. As a result, the computers on the network are prevented from network access.

Need a Free Anti virus?
Anti virus in the markets are available at a cost and most of them offer trial versions with limited functionality. The trial versions expire after a set period of time or produce reports of infections but with no functionality to clean or fix them. There are many free anti virus tools available in the market, totally free to use by time and functionality.